The new year is expected to become the year when the crypto market moves from short-term price volatility to financial infrastructure. The Ethereum-based DeFi ecosystem absorbing real-world asset tokenization will blur the boundary with finance, and stablecoins will be actively adopted in inter-business payments, accelerating a shift toward infrastructure investment. The Ethereum DeFi infrastructure, which has relied on speculative demand from individual investors, is expected to evolve into institutional-grade financial infrastructure by next year as it accommodates RWA.
DeFi is an open financial network that implements financial functions such as trading, lending, and derivatives on the Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts (condition-based automatic agreements) without intermediaries like banks or brokerages. Its core is to use real assets such as government bonds, real estate, and accounts receivable as blockchain-based collateral or to provide liquidity. This is expected to prove its value as an alternative infrastructure that solves the high fees and slow settlement speeds of the traditional financial system. Already in cooperation with the U.S. SEC to regard Ethereum as a core asset and have begun adjusting regulations related to tokenized securities.
Nasdaq is pursuing blockchain integration in its settlement system, and JPMorgan is advancing institutional digital-asset products, which backs this development. Researcher Park Seong-je of Hana Securities also said, “MasterCard has built a blockchain-based settlement system,” and that it will expand to consumer-level blockchain-based payments in the future. In this process, stablecoins serve as the core settlement tool for inter-company transactions. Like the fiat-backed stablecoin RLUSD issued by Ripple, such asset-backed stablecoins will pair with payment-infrastructure firms to maximize cross-border remittance and settlement efficiency.
This is expected to be a core infrastructure that can maximize cost savings in the long, complex B2B payment space. Domestic markets are also accelerating efforts to establish institutional foundations aligned with regulatory changes. Dunamu and Naver are representative examples.
Park noted, “Naver plans to connect Dunamu’s blockchain with Naver Pay’s payment network to build stablecoin-related infrastructure,” and that “with domestic legislation pending, major companies are expected to preemptively capture the market.” However, the domestic market is characterized as unique due to low interest rates, a limited short-term government bond market, and an advanced payment infrastructure. Kim Hyun-man, a research fellow at Tos Insight, said, “A tailored strategy to exploit gaps and inefficiencies in the domestic payment market is needed,” and “in the long term, efforts should attract foreign institutions to expand international use of won-backed stablecoins.”
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